Bobbs-Merrill Company

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 3rd of October 1850, a man named Samuel Merrill walked into an Indianapolis bookstore and bought it. That single transaction planted the seed of what would become the Bobbs-Merrill Company, a publishing house that would survive for over a century and a quarter, shaping American law, literature, and cookery along the way. What made Bobbs-Merrill unusual was not just its longevity. Between 1899 and 1909, the company published sixteen novels that each landed on the national top-ten best-seller list for at least one year. It also fought a court case that reached the United States Supreme Court and permanently altered how copyright law works in America. And it brought readers Ayn Rand, the Joy of Cooking, the Wizard of Oz, and Raggedy Ann. How did a bookstore in Indianapolis build that kind of reach?

• 2. From Merrill to Bobbs

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  Samuel Merrill did not live long enough to see his bookstore become a publisher of national consequence. He died in 1855, just five years after opening the store, and his son Samuel Merrill Jr. took over the operation. The business kept evolving its name as new partners came and went. Shortly after the American Civil War, which ended in 1865, the firm traded under the name Merrill, Meigs, and Company. By 1883 it had become the Bowen-Merrill Company. The name that stuck came in 1903, when the company was renamed after William Conrad Bobbs, a long-time director whose influence had evidently shaped the firm enough to earn that honor. That name, Bobbs-Merrill, would be the one carried forward into the twentieth century and into literary history.

• 3. The First-Sale Doctrine

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  Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, decided in 1908, is cited as the origin of copyright's first-sale doctrine, one of the foundational rules of American intellectual property law. The company was the plaintiff in that case, which went all the way to the United States Supreme Court and is recorded at 210 U.S. 339. The first-sale doctrine, born from that ruling, established the principle that once a copyright holder sells a copy of a work, they lose the right to control what the buyer does with that particular copy. That legal outcome rippled far beyond Indianapolis. Libraries, used-book shops, and resellers have operated under the framework that Bobbs-Merrill's lawsuit inadvertently created.

• 4. Authors and Voices

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  Erving Goffman, the sociologist known for his work on social interaction, appeared on the Bobbs-Merrill list alongside adventure writer Richard Halliburton and novelist David Markson. Walter Dean Myers, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Ayn Rand also published with the firm. James Whitcomb Riley, the Indiana poet, was among the company's authors, which gave the publisher a geographic connection as deep as its roots. Keith Ayling's The Story of Old Leatherneck of the Flying Tigers came out under the Bobbs-Merrill imprint in 1945, and Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase appeared in 1908. Among the most enduring of the house's discoveries was L. Frank Baum, whose early fantasy works the company published before the Wizard of Oz became a cultural institution.

• 5. Oz, Raggedy Ann, and Children's Books

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  Bobbs-Merrill published The Wizard of Oz and twenty-seven titles in the Raggedy Ann series, making children's literature a significant part of the firm's catalog. In 1944, the company commissioned artist Evelyn Copelman to illustrate a new edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was later issued as both The Wizard of Oz and The New Wizard of Oz. Copelman's work drew more from the 1939 MGM film starring Judy Garland than from W. W. Denslow's original 1900 illustrations, even though the book's credits said otherwise. The year those illustrations first appeared, 1949, was also the year the MGM film received its first theatrical re-release, a coincidence that linked the new edition to a fresh wave of public attention for the story.

• 6. Law Books and State Codes

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  For a long stretch of its history, Bobbs-Merrill held contracts to publish the codified state laws of Indiana and several other states. That work placed the company at the intersection of publishing and government in a way that few houses managed. The firm also produced legal textbooks, school textbooks, and texts in the history of philosophy. Among its series were the Library of Liberal Arts and the Notable American Trials collection. These publishing lines gave Bobbs-Merrill a durability that depended less on bestseller lists and more on institutional customers: courts, schools, and libraries that needed reliable, authoritative editions year after year.

• 7. Acquisition and End

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  The Howard W. Sams Company purchased Bobbs-Merrill in 1959, bringing the independent Indianapolis publisher under corporate ownership for the first time in its long history. The Bobbs-Merrill name survived that transition intact. What ended it was a second acquisition: when Macmillan bought Howard W. Sams in 1985, the Bobbs-Merrill name was retired. One product kept the imprint alive a little longer. The Fifth Revision of The Joy of Cooking, written by Irma S. Rombauer, continued to sell steadily under Macmillan, and for a time the Bobbs-Merrill name remained attached to it as an exception to the general discontinuation. Selected College Division titles, including the Library of Liberal Arts, also carried forward. Rombauer's cookbook outlasted the company that had built its reputation.